The Best Brief Quotes From the Same Old Future of Media Panel

June 8, 2011

Today was I Want Media’s vaguely titled panel “The Future of Media: 2011,” part of the ongoing Internet Week. While most of the discussion was same old, same old (Times digital subscriptions, Gawker redesign, Daily Beast-Newsweek merger), there was a mostly energetic group of panelists, including the New York Times media columnist David Carr, always good for a one-liner, Gawker Editor Remy Stern, Observer Editor-in-Chief Elizabeth Spiers, Huffington Post Big News Editor Saul Hansell, Newsweek/Daily Beast Executive Editor Edward Felsenthal and Facebook Journalist Program Manager Vadim Lavrusik. Not that these panels ever pinpoint what the future of media will be, but they occasionally offer some small bits of wisdom — serious and not. We have compiled those for you here.

HuffPo’s Hansell in a response to a question on aggregation, discussing the nature of industry in general: “There are a lot more people saying things than there is stuff to say in this world.”

Hansell on the same subject: “You are serving an audience, but you are not serving J-school professors or some abstraction.”

Hansell on if Patch was an experiment: “If you are not going to experiment in this world with these things, what the hell are you doing?”

Stern on the Gawker redesign: “People don’t scroll.”

Carr on Stern’s mention of Anthony Weiner’s penis being the top story on Gawker: “Nothing like a little clickable Weiner.”

Followed by Moderator Patrick Phillips of I Want Media: “Now is there a way to monetize that?”

(It also should be noted that while this Weiner-centric exchange was happening, a woman two seats away from us immediately went to Gawker on her iPad and tried to click on the link.)

Spiers on kids: “That is actually a challenge with a lot of the younger generation is that they don’t want to get on the phone, and they aren’t used to interacting with people in person.”

Carr on the chance he would leave the Times: “I don’t know why I would make a change. I guess for more money, but if I wanted more money I probably wouldn’t look into journalism.”

We can probably say that has been the case and will always remain the same.